EU Call for Proposals: Local Authorities – Partnerships for Sustainable Cities

Deadline: 6 December 2018

The European Union (EU) has announced a Call for Proposals to promote integrated urban development through partnerships built among Local Authorities of the EU Member States and of partner countries in accordance with the 2030 Agenda on sustainable development.

Partnerships will support Local Authorities from partner countries to address sustainable urban development through capacity building and service-delivery. Peer to peer exchanges of Local Authorities are at the heart of this approach. Actions could support the building of new partnerships or contribute to upscale long-lasting partnerships and cooperation relations.

Specific Objectives

• Strengthen urban governance
• Ensure social inclusiveness of cities
• Improve resilience and greening of cities
• Improve prosperity and innovation in cities

The proposed partnerships must address the first specific objective (urban governance) and at least one out of the three remaining objectives (social inclusiveness, greening of cities, prosperity and innovation). It should clearly adopt an integrated urban development with a view to contributing to the localisation of the SDGs.

Lots

The Call contains four lots divided into geographical areas (see Annex O):

• Lot 1: Partnerships for sustainable cities in Sub-Saharan Africa (Total available: EUR 23,651,603.00)
• Lot 2: Partnerships for sustainable cities in Asia and the Pacific (Total available: EUR 10,000,000.00)
• Lot 3: Partnerships for sustainable cities in Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean (Total available: EUR 10,000,000.00)
• Lot 4: Partnerships for sustainable cities in the Neighbourhood South and East (Total available: EUR 9,500,000.00)

Priorities

For all lots, proposals must clearly indicate and explain how they address the following three priorities (all of them). A Proposal which does not clearly address the priorities of the Action may be rejected on this sole basis.

• Clearly demonstrate their contribution to the achievement of SDG 11.
• Integrate in the activities the promotion of peer-to-peer learning and/or exchanges and/or short-term deployment of public officials’ expertise at subnational level towards sustainable urban development – twinning/decentralised cooperation.
• Promote multi-stakeholders and multi-sectors approaches.

Additional Priorities

The integration of at least one of the below listed additional priority will be considered as an added-value. Clear explanations should be provided.

• Triangular cooperation
• Smart cities
• Job creation

Funding Information

Any EU requested contribution under this call for proposals must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts:

• minimum amount: EUR 2,000,000.00
• maximum amount: EUR 5,000,000.00

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead applicant
  • Under all lots, in order to be eligible for a grant, the lead applicant must:
    • be a legal person and
    • be non-profit-making and
    • be a Local Authority (LA) or be an Association of Local Authorities (ALA) including city networks constituted in accordance with the legislation in force in the country;
    • be established in one of the following eligible countries or territories (Annex N):
      • EU Member States;
        • For British applicants: Please be aware that eligibility criteria must be complied with for the entire duration of the grant. Unless sector-specific eligibility rules provide otherwise , if the United Kingdom withdraws from the EU during the grant period without concluding an agreement with the EU ensuring in particular that British applicants continue to be eligible, applicants will cease to receive EU funding (while continuing, where possible to participate) or will be required to leave the project on the basis of Article 12.2 of the grant agreement’.
      • Developing countries and territories, as included in the list of ODA recipients published by the OECD-DAC (‘list of ODA recipients’), which are not members of the G-20 group;
      • Developing countries, as included in the list of ODA recipients, which are members of the G-20 group, where the country itself is a beneficiary of the action;
      • Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) covered by Council Decision 2013/755/EU of 25 November 2013 on the association of the overseas countries and territories with the European Union;
      • And other countries and territories, when they are beneficiaries of the action financed by the Union under the DCI Instrument;
    • be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with the co-applicant(s) and affiliated entity(ies), not acting as an intermediary.
• Co-applicant(s)
  • Under all lots, the lead applicant must act with a minimum of one co-applicant as specified hereafter.
  • For each lot, either the lead applicant or the co-applicant must be established in a EU Member State and the other/one of the others is established in the beneficiary country where the action will take place.
  • Co-applicants participate in designing and implementing the Action, and the costs they incur are eligible in the same way as those incurred by the lead applicant.
• Affiliated entities
  • The lead applicant and its co-applicant(s) may act with affiliated entity(ies).
  • Only the following entities may be considered as affiliated entities to the lead applicant and/or to co-applicant(s):
    • Only entities having a structural link with the applicants (i.e. the lead applicant or a co-applicant), in particular a legal or capital link.
  • This structural link encompasses mainly two notions:
    • Control, as defined in Directive 2013/34/EU on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings:
      • Entities affiliated to applicant may hence be:
        • ­Entities directly or indirectly controlled by the applicant (daughter companies or first-tier subsidiaries). They may also be entities controlled by an entity controlled by the applicant (granddaughter companies or second-tier subsidiaries) and the same applies to further tiers of control;
        • ­Entities directly or indirectly controlling the applicant (parent companies). Likewise, they may be entities controlling an entity controlling the applicant;
        • ­Entities under the same direct or indirect control as the applicant (sister companies).
    • Membership, i.e. the applicant is legally defined as a e.g. network, federation, association in which the proposed affiliated entities also participate or the applicant participates in the same entity (e.g. network, federation, association) as the proposed affiliated entities.

How to Apply

In order to apply for the grants, applicants have to register themselves in PADOR, an on-line database via given website.

For more information, please visit Europeaid and download the guidelines.